Location Dondon, Haiti
Client UTE-MEF (financed by the World Bank, PAST project)
The PAEEV (Plan d’Aménagement, Extension et Embellissement de la Ville) is the legal planning instrument used in Haiti, under the law of 29 May 1963 establishing rules on the planning and urbanism of towns and municipalities, completed by a compendium of decrees and laws compiled by CIAT in 2013.
The Municipality of Dondon is an institutionally weak body, with no autonomy and no management, financial or technical capacity. The plan was promoted and driven by a cooperation and development project financed by the World Bank, in the context of enhancing the heritage value of the Citadelle Henry National Historic Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Within the classic methodology for drafting an urban plan, the PAEEV is structured in Diagnosis, Future Vision and Normative Document phases, including an investment plan-programme. The difference here is that the first two phases were carried out participatively, identifying the population’s priorities and facilitating understanding of the current situation and of different development scenarios, with a strong focus on the need to change the current trend. Following the final normative document, a series of technical training sessions was also offered.
The diagnosis combined technical work — data collection, observation and site visits, analysis of how the town functions, mapping and delimitation of the town, including identifying a landfill site and assessing the impact of the RN3 national highway, which crosses the National Historic Park — with a participatory process in which key stakeholders were identified and a community workshop was held to complete and validate the collected data and, above all, to identify and prioritize needs sector by sector, applying criteria of spatial and social justice and a gender and equality perspective.
To debate these scenarios with the community and shape them collectively, the team chose not to use technical plans but figurative, easily understood graphics — illustrating, for example, the loss of vegetation cover and trees, the loss of farmland, the loss of heritage, increasing pollution, the use of green energy, and facilities. Each scenario was linked to a list of actions drawn from the participatory diagnosis. These tools greatly helped the community understand what an urban plan is and its capacity to shape the future of the town they live in.
The resulting zoning proposal is based on the zoning codes of the 1963 law and includes a basic graphic regulation, easy for non-specialist staff to interpret. The investment plan-programme was developed on two levels: a five-year programme with five priority projects selected and voted on by the community, and a plan covering the full lifetime of the master plan, including tables and a timeline to track implementation.
This remains the weak point of urban planning in Haiti: it depends on substantial investment that no single actor — multilateral banks, bilateral cooperation, NGOs, or national and municipal government — commits to delivering in full, so even short-term forecasts remain uncertain given the general difficulties of implementing cooperation and development projects in these contexts.
The project was awarded the COVAN 2025 Prize in the Extraterritorial Urbanism category.